


In the Details

by SerpentsKiss



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Learning How to Relationship, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:55:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2168328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerpentsKiss/pseuds/SerpentsKiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve discovers that new technology and cultures aren't all that he has to adjust to, living in the now. Nat realizes that she can live with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Details

Steve had never thought much about anniversaries. Birthdays and all, he had those down pat, it wasn't that. Even his parents' anniversary wasn't a problem for him, though it was beyond strange to visit those graves and find the stones so old. No, he'd mourned them already when he'd gone into the ice. That grief was an old part of his soul that was a scar he'd never want to forget but no longer a wound that pained him.

These... these were different.

He wasn't expecting any of them. The dates crept up on him, silent and unassuming, and hit him like punches in the gut one by one when he dated a check or glanced at a calendar or checked when a bill was due. The day Bucky left and he enlisted. The day Erskine died and he became so much more than he had been. The day he met Peggy for the first time. The day he went into the ice.

That one haunted him most. No one else was left who remembered the way she talked him gently down into his death, holding his hand without faltering the whole way. He couldn't have done it without her, though he'd never want her to know it. What a curse, to be there when someone needed you only to have that someone need you so that they wouldn't be there. It was so unfair. It was so damned unfair that she'd never failed to be strong for him and he'd never once been able to return the favor.

Natasha caught him in the window seat, the check for the utility bill half written and Steve staring through it while the ink dried on the tip of his ballpoint. He didn't notice her at first, and she didn't force him to. It surprised her a little to find him like this, though she thought that perhaps it shouldn't. Surely someone as level and calm as Steve had to have more wounds that he realized. He'd find them all eventually, as she had. The stumbling was the worst part, though – the going about your day in perfect normalcy only to feel as though you'd taken a bullet to your side.

It worried her a little that he didn't seem inclined to snap out of it. Cautiously, she settled down across from him, purposefully disturbing his peripheral vision but not touching him or speaking. He did notice, she could tell by the way his too-shallow breathing quickened, the sudden blink. He took a moment to look up at her, though, and when he did he wore that smile that always broke her heart a little, the one he used when he was really hurting and didn't think he deserved to feel better.

“Sorry,” he said, and the word squeezed her chest just a little tighter. “Anniversary,” he finished, and she was already taking the checkbook out of his hands and setting it aside to pull him into her arms.

He leaned into her with the inexorable force of a tree coming down in slow motion. His movements appeared so controlled, so steady, but when his body touched hers it was as though he crashed with all the force of his frame. His arms were around her, but not in the embrace to which she'd become accustomed. He was clinging, quiet tears dampening her shirt while his shoulders shook. She didn't hesitate, curling her small body as far around his as she could and tucking her face into his hair to whisper sweet words to him. Comfort had never come naturally to her, but Steve drew it out of her as easily a knife could draw her blood, and she gave willingly, wanting fiercely to steep him in it.

He'd never cried like this before, she realized. Neither had she, for that matter. He'd shed tears sometimes, when their early morning chats became serious, but he'd never lost control. In return, she'd never so much as let him see her cry. Seeing him now, holding him and feeling the weight of his trust against her chest, she realized that it was going to be important between them. Sometime, sooner or later, she would have to choose a burden and decide not to bear it alone. She would have to bring it to him, and offer it up, and let him comfort her in the grief she so often bit back and refused to feel.

The realization made it easier to bear his pain. She focused herself, her words, her whole being on soothing him and touching him and whispering that it was okay for him to feel so much. He seemed to take comfort in it all, his shaking ceasing slowly and his tears not long after. It took a very long time indeed for him to move, though, to loosen his bruising grip on her and look down sheepishly into her face.

“Sorry --” he started to say again, and this time she interrupted him by leaning up and cupping his face in her hands. She pressed her lips to his to quiet him and his resistance, his apologies, his tension all melted away as he accepted her kiss and returned it with a hint of wonder.

They rested their foreheads together after that, eyes closed, her hands cradling his face and his cupping gently at the back of her head. His voice was soft when he spoke, a little rueful. “You don't think I'm weak.” He said it as though he'd known it all along and should have realized it. As though he didn't think himself weak, either, and it surprised him. After all, Steve Rogers survived by stubbornness, not by coping. Having to feel to cope, to suffer a little, was something new to him. Something she was willing to share.

“I know,” she whispered back, and drew him down against her chest again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sleepy and I haven't proofread and this actually isn't someone else's fault for once I take full responsibility thank you and goodnight


End file.
